If I were making money out of this, do you really think I'd be posting it on a site called FANfiction?
The only thing necessary
"How do you do it? How does Dad do it?"
"Well, for one, them. I figure our family's so screwed to hell, maybe we can help some others."
Driving away from Lost Creek (yes, it's true, Dean's broken the habit of a lifetime and let you drive the Impala) that exchange in the woods is running in your head. You're not sure why it made such an impression on you, but of all the things that have happened the last two days – the aches, the bruises, the exhilaration of escaping that mine with your life, the terror that coursed through you when Dean and Haley were dragged off – it's those words of Dean's that won't leave you alone. You glance across at him in the passenger's seat as he shifts restlessly. He's hurt, not badly, but still, and covered in bruises, and you need to find a motel soon because he'll crack before long. Doing nothing has never been Dean's forte. You'd rather be locked in a cell with a vengeful spirit, a werewolf at full moon and a Wendigo than a bored Dean. And if he's not driving, chances are… ah, the grimace, hand running through his hair, right, and now he'll reach for the tape box – thank you God, a motel.
Amazing, how after all this time you can still read him so well. There's awkwardness, of course; grief for Jess and long absence is dulling your reactions, clouding your thoughts, making it hard for you to slip back into the old habits, the old attitudes. But you still remember them with perfect clarity, and sooner or later they'll be back altogether, and then you'll be brothers again, like you were before.
These musings, as you pull the Impala into the parking lot, as you check in and heave your duffle into the room, drive Dean's words out of your head for now, but they insist on cropping up at the strangest moments over the next months. You remember them as Andrea reaches out to take Lucas from Dean, crying as she hugs her little boy. You remember them as you sit next to Charlie on the bed, listening to her sobbing out her secret. You remember them as Amanda mouths "Thank you" at the both of you as you turn to leave the airport.
Standing in Zach's kitchen, looking at the photo of you and him and Rebecca at Stanford, they hit you again. It's like an epiphany, this sudden realisation. Stanford was normal to you for so long, safe, protected, far away from the darkness you grew up in that it seemed like a different world. It wasn't. It isn't. It never will be.
Dean and Becky are at the door, talking softly, and you're swamped with memories. Newspaper articles, campus rumours, reports on the TV. Every one a possible hunt. Every one ignored. "Desperate to be normal" your reflection mocked in Toledo, and now you know Jess wasn't the only one to pay the price of your obsession to be ordinary. Because you ignoring them doesn't make these monsters go away. Hence the .45 Dad gave you. You've been so selfish, you hardly recognize yourself. What made you think you had the right to put your peace of mind above other people's lives? The ghoulies, and ghosties, and lang-legged beasties, and things-that-go-bump-in-the-night won't spare your friends just because you've had a falling-out with Dad, and don't want to hunt anymore. Please, don't come after me, leave my friends alone, I'm not a hunter anymore? Pathetic.
Suddenly, you know why Dean's words of that night on Blackwater Ridge have stayed with you for so long… why they'll always stay with you. Oh, you'll have your relapses. Nobody's perfect. (Except maybe Dean.) You'll have your outbursts, your fits of anger/despair, your exclamations of Why me? and I just want to go to school and be normal. The habits of a lifetime, the thinking patterns of all your teenage years, are hard to break. But at the end of the day, Dean's words are always with you, his voice in your mind under the need for vengeance and the layers of anger at the unfairness of it all.
…maybe we can help some others.
After all, the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.